Tag: reading

New Fiction 2014

Short Stories

  • “I’m the Meat, You’re the Knife” by Paul Theroux (2013)
  • “Summer of ‘38” by Colm Tóibín (2013)
  • “Zusya on the Roof” by Nicole Krauss (2013)
  • “Samsa in Love” by Haruki Murakami (2013)
  • “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce (1890)
  • “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” by Sherman Alexie (1993)
  • “Rock Springs” by Richard Ford (1987)
  • “Same Place, Same Things” by Tim Gautreux (1991)
  • “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe (1839)
  • “An Inch and a Half of Glory” by Dashiell Hammet (2013)
  • “Rough Deeds” by Annie Proulx (2013)
  • “Slide to Unlock” by Ed Park (2013)
  • “Happy Trails” by Sherman Alexie (2013)
  • “Scenes of the Crime” by Cormac McCarthy (2013)
  • “Brotherly Love” by Jhumpa Lahiri (2013)
  • “The Judge’s Will” by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (2013)
  • “Weight Watchers” by Thomas McGuane (2013)
  • “The Last Few Kilometres” by Leonid Tsypkin (2012)
  • “The Christmas Miracle” by Rebecca Curtis (2013)
  • “The Night of the Satellite” by T. Coraghessan Boyle (2013)
  • “The Lost Order” by Rivka Galchen (2013)
  • “Amundsen” by Alice Munro (2012)
  • “The Women” by William Trevor (2013)
  • “The Furies” by Paul Theroux (2013)
  • “Mayfly” by Kevin Canty (2013)
  • “Spilled Salt” by Barbara Neely (1990)
  • “The Laugher” by Heinrich Böll (1966)
  • “The South” by Jorge Luis Borges (1956)
  • “The Courtship of Mr. Lyon” by Angela Carter (1979)
  • “The Seamstress” by Gabrielle-Sidonie Colette (19xx)
  • “Amy Foster” by Joseph Conrad (1903)
  • “The Bear Came Over the Mountain” by Alice Munro (2013)
  • “Coming Soon” by Steven Milhauser (2013)
  • “Island of Manhattan” by René Marqués (1974)
  • “The Street-Sweeping Show” by Feng Jicai (1982)
  • “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1892)
  • “A Jury of Her Peers” by Susan Glaspell (1917)
  • “Sarzan” by Birago Diop (1947)
  • “Paseo” by José Donoso (1969)
  • “Love Medicine” by Louise Erdrich (1982)
  • “Boys at the Rodeo” by Judy Grahn (1978)
  • “The Birthmark” by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1843)
  • “Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway (1927)
  • “Thank You, M’am” by Langston Hughes (1953)
  • “The Gilded Six-Bits” by Zora Neale Hurston (1933)
  • “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson (1948)
  • “A Story for Children” by Svava Jakobsdóttir (1975)
  • “Greville Fane” by Henry James (1892)
  • “A White Heron” by Sarah Orne Jewett (1886)
  • “A Report to an Academy” by Franz Kafka (1917)
  • “A Hand in the Grave” by Ghassan Kanafani (1962)
  • “Betel Nut is Bad Magic for Airplanes” by John Kasaipwalova (1972)
  • “The Gold-Legged Frog” by Khamsing Srinawk (1958)
  • “My Mother” by Jamaica Kincaid (1983)
  • “A Bird in the House” by Margaret Laurence (1972)
  • “The Old Chief Mshlanga” by Doris Lessing (1951)
  • “Or Else, the Lightning God” by Catherine Lim (1980)
  • “Half a Day” by Naguib Mahfouz (1989)
  • “Her First Ball” by Katherine Mansfield (1922)
  • “Shiloh” by Bobbie Ann Mason (1982)
  • “The Appointment in Samarra” by William Somerset Maugham (1933)
  • “Lush Life” by John McCluskey (1990)
  • “The One Who Goes Farthest Away” by Katherine Min (1990)
  • “Swaddling Clothes” by Mishima Yukio (1966)
  • “How to Become a Writer” by Lorrie Moore (1985)
  • “Recitatif” by Toni Morrison (1983)
  • “Mrs. Plum” by Es’kia Mphahlele (1967)
  • “The Elephant” by Slawomir Mrożek (1962)
  • “And We Sold the Rain” by Carmen Naranjo (1988)
  • “A Horse and Two Goats” by R. K. Narayan (1970)
  • “The Pale Fox” by Ōba Minako (1973)
  • “In the Shadow of War” by Ben Okri (1988)
  • “I Stand Here Ironing” by Tillie Olsen (1953)
  • “Black Girl” by Sembene Ousmane (1962)
  • “Nomad and Viper” by Amos Oz (1963)
  • “The Blue Bouquet” by Octavio Paz (1961)
  • “Mona Lisa” by Cristina Peri Rossi (1983)
  • “Insomnia” by Virgilio Piñera (1956)
  • “Rope” by Katherine Anne Porter (1930)
  • “The Proof” by Rodrigo Rey Rosa (1987)
  • “The Prophet’s Hair” by Salman Rushdie (1994)
  • “Gimpel the Fool” by Isaac Bashevis Singer (1953)
  • “The Chrysanthemums” by John Steinbeck (1938)
  • “Learning to Swim” by Graham Swift (1982)
  • “The Betrayal” by Véronique Tadjo (1992)
  • “Half and Half” by Amy Tan (1989)
  • “To All Eternity” by Haldun Taner (1948)
  • “The Complete Gentleman” by Amos Tutuola (1952)
  • “Luck” by Mark Twain (1891)
  • “Strange Things Happen Here” by Luisa Valenzuela (1975)
  • “Sunday” by Mario Vargas Llosa (1958)
  • “In Africa There Is a Type of Spider” by Yvonne Vera (2000)
  • “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker (1973)
  • “Why I Live at the P.O.” by Eudora Welty (1941)
  • “Kew Gardens” by Virginia Woolf (1919)
  • “The Daily Woman” by Niaz Zaman (1996)
  • “Pet Milk” by Stuart Dybek (1981)
  • “Saint Marie” by Louise Erdrich (1984)
  • “The Mail Lady” by David Gates (1999)
  • “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried” by Amp Hempel (1985)
  • “Cold Snap” by Thom Jones (1995)
  • “The Management of Grief” by Bharati Mukherjee (1988)
  • “Meneseteung” by Alice Munro (1990)
  • “Brokeback Mountain” by Annie Proulx (1999)
  • “Strays” by Mark Richard (1989)
  • “Intensive Care” by Lee Smith (1988)
  • “The Way We Live Now” by Susan Sontag (1986)
  • “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan (1989)
  • “First, Body” by Melanie Rae Thon (1997)
  • “Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog” by Stephanie Vaughn (1978)
  • “Fever” by John Edgar Wideman (1989)
  • “Taking Care” by Joy Williams (1972)
  • “Terrified” by C. B. Gilford (1959)
  • “Peter Rugg, the Missing Man” by William Austin
  • “The Wives of the Dead” by Nathaniel Hawthorne
  • “The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids” by Herman Melville
  • “The Ghost in the Mill” by Harriet Beecher Stowe
  • “Cannibalism in the Cars” by Samuel Clemens
  • “The Storm” by Kate Chopin
  • “The Sheriff’s Children” by Charles Chesnutt
  • “The Middle Years” by Henry James
  • “In a Far Country” by Jack London
  • “Old Woman Magoun” by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
  • “The Little Regiment” by Stephen Crane
  • “A Journey” by Edith Wharton
  • “The Strength of God” by Sherwood Anderson (1919)
  • “A Death in the Desert” by Willa Cather
  • “Blood-Burning Moon” by Jean Toomer (1923)
  • “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” by Ernest Hemingway (1933)
  • “An Alcoholic Case” by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1937)
  • “The Girl with a Pimply Face” by William Carlos Williams (1961)
  • “He” by Katherine Anne Porter (1930)
  • “That Evening Sun” by William Faulkner (1931)
  • “Sweat” by Zora Neale Hurston
  • “Red-Headed Baby” by Langston Hughes (1934)
  • “The Man Who Was Almost a Man” by Richard Wright (1987)
  • “A Late Encounter with the Enemy” by Flannery O’Connor (1953)
  • “Battle Royal” by Ralph Ellison (1948)
  • “There Will Come Soft Rains” by Ray Bradbury (1950)
  • “Rain in the Heart” by Peter Taylor (1941)
  • “The Lecture” by Isaac Bashevis Singer (1968)
  • “My Son the Murderer” by Bernard Malamud (1968)
  • “Something to Remember Me By” by Saul Bellow (1990)
  • “The Death of Justina” by John Cheever (1960)
  • “Texts” by Ursula K. Le Guin (1990)
  • “The Persistence of Desire” by John Updike (1959)
  • “Alaska” by Alice Adams (1984)
  • “Are These Actual Miles?” by Raymond Carver (1972)
  • “Hunters in the Snow” by Tobias Wolff (1976)
  • “Big Bertha Stories” by Bobbie Ann Mason (1988)
  • “Fleur” by Louise Erdrich (1988)
  • “Gravity” by David Leavitt (1990)
  • “The House on Mango Street” by Sandra Cisneros (1989)
  • “Town Smokes” by Pinckney Benedict (1987)

Video Games

  • Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door dev. Nintendo and Intelligent Systems (2004)
  • The Walking Dead: 400 Days dev. TellTale Games and Skybound Entertainment (2013)
  • Papers, Please dev. Lukas Pope (2013)
  • Actual Sunlight dev. Will O’Neill (2014)
  • Castles in the Sky dev. The Tall Trees (2014)
  • The Walking Dead: Season 2 dev. TellTale Games and Skybound Entertainment (2013-2014)
  • Shovel Knight dev. Yacht Club Games (2014)
  • The Simpsons: Tapped Out dev. Electronic Arts (2012-2014)

Novels

  • Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (1884)
  • Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden (1997)
  • On the Road by Jack Kerouac (1957)
  • The Getaway by Jim Thompson (1958)
  • The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver (1988)
  • Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver (1993)
  • The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)

Comics

  • Wolverine: Old Man Logan by Mark Millar and Steve McNiven (2008-2009)
  • Black Hole by Charles Burns (1995-2005)
  • “Soup” by Irene Koh (2014)
  • We3 by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely

Films

  • 200 Cigarettes dir. Risa Bramon Garcia (1999)
  • Wild Boys of the Road dir. William A. Wellman (1933)
  • Detour dir. Edgar G. Ulmer (1945)
  • Two-Lane Blacktop dir. Monte Hellman (1971)
  • The Manchurian Candidate dir. John Frankenheimer (1962)
  • Patton dir. Franklin J. Schaffner (1970)
  • Badlands dir. Terrence Malick (1973)
  • On the Road dir. Walter Salles (2012)
  • Smoke Signals dir. Chris Eyre (1998)
  • The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert dir. Stephan Elliott (1994)
  • Cabeza de Vaca dir. Nicolás Echevarría (1991)
  • Ida dir. Pawel Pawlikowski (2013)
  • Pacific Rim dir. Guillermo del Toro (2013)
  • Transformers: Dark of the Moon dir. Michael Bay (2011)
  • Dawn of the Planet of the Apes dir. Matt Reeves (2014)
  • Edge of Tomorrow dir. Doug Liman (2014)
  • Wicked City dir. Yoshiaki Kawajiri (1987)
  • The Equalizer dir. Antoine Fuqua (2014)
  • The Homesman dir. Tommy Lee Jones (2014)

Short Films

  • “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” dir. Robert Enrico (1962)
  • “I’ll Wait for the Next One” dir. Phillippe Orreindy (2002)
  • “Zen & the Art of Landscaping” dir. David Kartch (2001)
  • “Inja” dir. Steve Pasvolsky (2002)
  • “Kitchen Sink” dir. Alison Maclean (1989)
  • “Gridlock” dir. Dirk Beliën (2001)
  • “Black Rider” dir. Pepe Danquart (1993)
  • “Our Time Is Up” dir. Rob Pearlstein (2004)
  • “Six Shooter” dir. Martin McDonagh (2004)
  • “Spider” dir. Nash Edgerton (2007)
  • “Some Folks Call It a Sling Blade” dir. George Hickenlooper (1994)
  • “More” dir. Mark Osborne (1998)

Television

  • Dexter – Season 8 (2013)
  • Sherlock – Series 3 (2013)
  • Adventure Time – Season 1 (2010)
  • Over the Garden Wall (2014)
  • Bee and Puppycat – Season 1 (2014)

New Fiction 2014

Short Stories

  • “I’m the Meat, You’re the Knife” by Paul Theroux (2013)
  • “Summer of ‘38” by Colm Tóibín (2013)
  • “Zusya on the Roof” by Nicole Krauss (2013)
  • “Samsa in Love” by Haruki Murakami (2013)
  • “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce (1890)
  • “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” by Sherman Alexie (1993)
  • “Rock Springs” by Richard Ford (1987)
  • “Same Place, Same Things” by Tim Gautreux (1991)
  • “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe (1839)
  • “An Inch and a Half of Glory” by Dashiell Hammet (2013)
  • “Rough Deeds” by Annie Proulx (2013)
  • “Slide to Unlock” by Ed Park (2013)
  • “Happy Trails” by Sherman Alexie (2013)
  • “Scenes of the Crime” by Cormac McCarthy (2013)
  • “Brotherly Love” by Jhumpa Lahiri (2013)
  • “The Judge’s Will” by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (2013)
  • “Weight Watchers” by Thomas McGuane (2013)
  • “The Last Few Kilometres” by Leonid Tsypkin (2012)
  • “The Christmas Miracle” by Rebecca Curtis (2013)
  • “The Night of the Satellite” by T. Coraghessan Boyle (2013)
  • “The Lost Order” by Rivka Galchen (2013)
  • “Amundsen” by Alice Munro (2012)
  • “The Women” by William Trevor (2013)
  • “The Furies” by Paul Theroux (2013)
  • “Mayfly” by Kevin Canty (2013)
  • “Spilled Salt” by Barbara Neely (1990)
  • “The Laugher” by Heinrich Böll (1966)
  • “The South” by Jorge Luis Borges (1956)
  • “The Courtship of Mr. Lyon” by Angela Carter (1979)
  • “The Seamstress” by Gabrielle-Sidonie Colette (19xx)
  • “Amy Foster” by Joseph Conrad (1903)
  • “The Bear Came Over the Mountain” by Alice Munro (2013)
  • “Coming Soon” by Steven Milhauser (2013)
  • “Island of Manhattan” by René Marqués (1974)
  • “The Street-Sweeping Show” by Feng Jicai (1982)
  • “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1892)
  • “A Jury of Her Peers” by Susan Glaspell (1917)
  • “Sarzan” by Birago Diop (1947)
  • “Paseo” by José Donoso (1969)
  • “Love Medicine” by Louise Erdrich (1982)
  • “Boys at the Rodeo” by Judy Grahn (1978)
  • “The Birthmark” by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1843)
  • “Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway (1927)
  • “Thank You, M’am” by Langston Hughes (1953)
  • “The Gilded Six-Bits” by Zora Neale Hurston (1933)
  • “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson (1948)
  • “A Story for Children” by Svava Jakobsdóttir (1975)
  • “Greville Fane” by Henry James (1892)
  • “A White Heron” by Sarah Orne Jewett (1886)
  • “A Report to an Academy” by Franz Kafka (1917)
  • “A Hand in the Grave” by Ghassan Kanafani (1962)
  • “Betel Nut is Bad Magic for Airplanes” by John Kasaipwalova (1972)
  • “The Gold-Legged Frog” by Khamsing Srinawk (1958)
  • “My Mother” by Jamaica Kincaid (1983)
  • “A Bird in the House” by Margaret Laurence (1972)
  • “The Old Chief Mshlanga” by Doris Lessing (1951)
  • “Or Else, the Lightning God” by Catherine Lim (1980)
  • “Half a Day” by Naguib Mahfouz (1989)
  • “Her First Ball” by Katherine Mansfield (1922)
  • “Shiloh” by Bobbie Ann Mason (1982)
  • “The Appointment in Samarra” by William Somerset Maugham (1933)
  • “Lush Life” by John McCluskey (1990)
  • “The One Who Goes Farthest Away” by Katherine Min (1990)
  • “Swaddling Clothes” by Mishima Yukio (1966)
  • “How to Become a Writer” by Lorrie Moore (1985)
  • “Recitatif” by Toni Morrison (1983)
  • “Mrs. Plum” by Es’kia Mphahlele (1967)
  • “The Elephant” by Slawomir Mrożek (1962)
  • “And We Sold the Rain” by Carmen Naranjo (1988)
  • “A Horse and Two Goats” by R. K. Narayan (1970)
  • “The Pale Fox” by Ōba Minako (1973)
  • “In the Shadow of War” by Ben Okri (1988)
  • “I Stand Here Ironing” by Tillie Olsen (1953)
  • “Black Girl” by Sembene Ousmane (1962)
  • “Nomad and Viper” by Amos Oz (1963)
  • “The Blue Bouquet” by Octavio Paz (1961)
  • “Mona Lisa” by Cristina Peri Rossi (1983)
  • “Insomnia” by Virgilio Piñera (1956)
  • “Rope” by Katherine Anne Porter (1930)
  • “The Proof” by Rodrigo Rey Rosa (1987)
  • “The Prophet’s Hair” by Salman Rushdie (1994)
  • “Gimpel the Fool” by Isaac Bashevis Singer (1953)
  • “The Chrysanthemums” by John Steinbeck (1938)
  • “Learning to Swim” by Graham Swift (1982)
  • “The Betrayal” by Véronique Tadjo (1992)
  • “Half and Half” by Amy Tan (1989)
  • “To All Eternity” by Haldun Taner (1948)
  • “The Complete Gentleman” by Amos Tutuola (1952)
  • “Luck” by Mark Twain (1891)
  • “Strange Things Happen Here” by Luisa Valenzuela (1975)
  • “Sunday” by Mario Vargas Llosa (1958)
  • “In Africa There Is a Type of Spider” by Yvonne Vera (2000)
  • “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker (1973)
  • “Why I Live at the P.O.” by Eudora Welty (1941)
  • “Kew Gardens” by Virginia Woolf (1919)
  • “The Daily Woman” by Niaz Zaman (1996)
  • “Pet Milk” by Stuart Dybek (1981)
  • “Saint Marie” by Louise Erdrich (1984)
  • “The Mail Lady” by David Gates (1999)
  • “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried” by Amp Hempel (1985)
  • “Cold Snap” by Thom Jones (1995)
  • “The Management of Grief” by Bharati Mukherjee (1988)
  • “Meneseteung” by Alice Munro (1990)
  • “Brokeback Mountain” by Annie Proulx (1999)
  • “Strays” by Mark Richard (1989)
  • “Intensive Care” by Lee Smith (1988)
  • “The Way We Live Now” by Susan Sontag (1986)
  • “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan (1989)
  • “First, Body” by Melanie Rae Thon (1997)
  • “Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog” by Stephanie Vaughn (1978)
  • “Fever” by John Edgar Wideman (1989)
  • “Taking Care” by Joy Williams (1972)
  • “Terrified” by C. B. Gilford (1959)
  • “Peter Rugg, the Missing Man” by William Austin
  • “The Wives of the Dead” by Nathaniel Hawthorne
  • “The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids” by Herman Melville
  • “The Ghost in the Mill” by Harriet Beecher Stowe
  • “Cannibalism in the Cars” by Samuel Clemens
  • “The Storm” by Kate Chopin
  • “The Sheriff’s Children” by Charles Chesnutt
  • “The Middle Years” by Henry James
  • “In a Far Country” by Jack London
  • “Old Woman Magoun” by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
  • “The Little Regiment” by Stephen Crane
  • “A Journey” by Edith Wharton
  • “The Strength of God” by Sherwood Anderson (1919)
  • “A Death in the Desert” by Willa Cather
  • “Blood-Burning Moon” by Jean Toomer (1923)
  • “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” by Ernest Hemingway (1933)
  • “An Alcoholic Case” by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1937)
  • “The Girl with a Pimply Face” by William Carlos Williams (1961)
  • “He” by Katherine Anne Porter (1930)
  • “That Evening Sun” by William Faulkner (1931)
  • “Sweat” by Zora Neale Hurston
  • “Red-Headed Baby” by Langston Hughes (1934)
  • “The Man Who Was Almost a Man” by Richard Wright (1987)
  • “A Late Encounter with the Enemy” by Flannery O’Connor (1953)
  • “Battle Royal” by Ralph Ellison (1948)
  • “There Will Come Soft Rains” by Ray Bradbury (1950)
  • “Rain in the Heart” by Peter Taylor (1941)
  • “The Lecture” by Isaac Bashevis Singer (1968)
  • “My Son the Murderer” by Bernard Malamud (1968)
  • “Something to Remember Me By” by Saul Bellow (1990)
  • “The Death of Justina” by John Cheever (1960)
  • “Texts” by Ursula K. Le Guin (1990)
  • “The Persistence of Desire” by John Updike (1959)
  • “Alaska” by Alice Adams (1984)
  • “Are These Actual Miles?” by Raymond Carver (1972)
  • “Hunters in the Snow” by Tobias Wolff (1976)
  • “Big Bertha Stories” by Bobbie Ann Mason (1988)
  • “Fleur” by Louise Erdrich (1988)
  • “Gravity” by David Leavitt (1990)
  • “The House on Mango Street” by Sandra Cisneros (1989)
  • “Town Smokes” by Pinckney Benedict (1987)

Video Games

  • Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door dev. Nintendo and Intelligent Systems (2004)
  • The Walking Dead: 400 Days dev. TellTale Games and Skybound Entertainment (2013)
  • Papers, Please dev. Lukas Pope (2013)
  • Actual Sunlight dev. Will O’Neill (2014)
  • Castles in the Sky dev. The Tall Trees (2014)
  • The Walking Dead: Season 2 dev. TellTale Games and Skybound Entertainment (2013-2014)
  • Shovel Knight dev. Yacht Club Games (2014)
  • The Simpsons: Tapped Out dev. Electronic Arts (2012-2014)

Novels

  • Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (1884)
  • Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden (1997)
  • On the Road by Jack Kerouac (1957)
  • The Getaway by Jim Thompson (1958)
  • The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver (1988)
  • Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver (1993)
  • The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)

Comics

  • Wolverine: Old Man Logan by Mark Millar and Steve McNiven (2008-2009)
  • Black Hole by Charles Burns (1995-2005)
  • “Soup” by Irene Koh (2014)
  • We3 by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely

Films

  • 200 Cigarettes dir. Risa Bramon Garcia (1999)
  • Wild Boys of the Road dir. William A. Wellman (1933)
  • Detour dir. Edgar G. Ulmer (1945)
  • Two-Lane Blacktop dir. Monte Hellman (1971)
  • The Manchurian Candidate dir. John Frankenheimer (1962)
  • Patton dir. Franklin J. Schaffner (1970)
  • Badlands dir. Terrence Malick (1973)
  • On the Road dir. Walter Salles (2012)
  • Smoke Signals dir. Chris Eyre (1998)
  • The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert dir. Stephan Elliott (1994)
  • Cabeza de Vaca dir. Nicolás Echevarría (1991)
  • Ida dir. Pawel Pawlikowski (2013)
  • Pacific Rim dir. Guillermo del Toro (2013)
  • Transformers: Dark of the Moon dir. Michael Bay (2011)
  • Dawn of the Planet of the Apes dir. Matt Reeves (2014)
  • Edge of Tomorrow dir. Doug Liman (2014)
  • Wicked City dir. Yoshiaki Kawajiri (1987)
  • The Equalizer dir. Antoine Fuqua (2014)
  • The Homesman dir. Tommy Lee Jones (2014)

Short Films

  • “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” dir. Robert Enrico (1962)
  • “I’ll Wait for the Next One” dir. Phillippe Orreindy (2002)
  • “Zen & the Art of Landscaping” dir. David Kartch (2001)
  • “Inja” dir. Steve Pasvolsky (2002)
  • “Kitchen Sink” dir. Alison Maclean (1989)
  • “Gridlock” dir. Dirk Beliën (2001)
  • “Black Rider” dir. Pepe Danquart (1993)
  • “Our Time Is Up” dir. Rob Pearlstein (2004)
  • “Six Shooter” dir. Martin McDonagh (2004)
  • “Spider” dir. Nash Edgerton (2007)
  • “Some Folks Call It a Sling Blade” dir. George Hickenlooper (1994)
  • “More” dir. Mark Osborne (1998)

Television

  • Dexter – Season 8 (2013)
  • Sherlock – Series 3 (2013)
  • Adventure Time – Season 1 (2010)
  • Over the Garden Wall (2014)
  • Bee and Puppycat – Season 1 (2014)

I read Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony” for a short story club, and I get it, but it’s not my style. It’s not bad, just… long-winded. And the absurdity whacks you over the head. Makes it obvious. When I write I don’t care for themes and points, but as a reader I always want to come out of it with a boiled-down conclusion. Compartmentalization of some sort.

I’m going to choose “Sarah Cole: A Type of Love Story” when my week comes up. I’ve been mired in modern literature for so long that the nineteenth and early twentieth stuff is jarring. Feels too straight-forward.

Love the diversity, if not the style.

‘“It’s a remarkable apparatus,” said the Officer to the Explorer and gazed with a certain look of admiration at the device, with which he was, of course, thoroughly familiar. It appeared that the Traveller had responded to the invitation of the Commandant only out of politeness, when he had been asked to attend the execution of a soldier condemned for disobeying and insulting his superior. Interest in this execution was not really very high even in the penal colony itself. At least, here in the small, deep, sandy valley, closed in on all sides by barren slopes, apart from the Officer and the Traveller there were present only the Condemned, a vacant-looking man with a broad mouth and dilapidated hair and face, and the Soldier, who held the heavy chain to which were connected the small chains which bound the Condemned Man by his feet and wrist bones, as well as by his neck, and which were also linked to each other by connecting chains. The Condemned Man, incidentally, had an expression of such dog-like resignation that it looked as if one could set him free to roam around the slopes and would only have to whistle at the start of the execution for him to return.’

“To begin, then, here is a scene in which I am the man and my friend Sarah Cole is the woman. I don’t mind describing it now, because I’m a decade older and don’t look the same now as I did then, and Sarah is dead. That is to say, on hearing this story you might think me vain if I looked the same now as I did then, because I must tell you that I was extremely handsome then. And if Sarah were not dead, you’d think I were cruel, for I must tell you that Sarah was very homely. In fact, she was the homeliest woman I have ever known. Personally, I mean. I’ve seen a few women who were more unattractive than Sarah, but they were clearly freaks of nature or had been badly injured or had been victimized by some grotesque, disfiguring disease. Sarah, however, was quite normal, and I knew her well, because for three and a half months we were lovers.”

I read Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony” for a short story club, and I get it, but it’s not my style. It’s not bad, just… long-winded. And the absurdity whacks you over the head. Makes it obvious. When I write I don’t care for themes and points, but as a reader I always want to come out of it with a boiled-down conclusion. Compartmentalization of some sort.

I’m going to choose “Sarah Cole: A Type of Love Story” when my week comes up. I’ve been mired in modern literature for so long that the nineteenth and early twentieth stuff is jarring. Feels too straight-forward.

Love the diversity, if not the style.

‘“It’s a remarkable apparatus,” said the Officer to the Explorer and gazed with a certain look of admiration at the device, with which he was, of course, thoroughly familiar. It appeared that the Traveller had responded to the invitation of the Commandant only out of politeness, when he had been asked to attend the execution of a soldier condemned for disobeying and insulting his superior. Interest in this execution was not really very high even in the penal colony itself. At least, here in the small, deep, sandy valley, closed in on all sides by barren slopes, apart from the Officer and the Traveller there were present only the Condemned, a vacant-looking man with a broad mouth and dilapidated hair and face, and the Soldier, who held the heavy chain to which were connected the small chains which bound the Condemned Man by his feet and wrist bones, as well as by his neck, and which were also linked to each other by connecting chains. The Condemned Man, incidentally, had an expression of such dog-like resignation that it looked as if one could set him free to roam around the slopes and would only have to whistle at the start of the execution for him to return.’

“To begin, then, here is a scene in which I am the man and my friend Sarah Cole is the woman. I don’t mind describing it now, because I’m a decade older and don’t look the same now as I did then, and Sarah is dead. That is to say, on hearing this story you might think me vain if I looked the same now as I did then, because I must tell you that I was extremely handsome then. And if Sarah were not dead, you’d think I were cruel, for I must tell you that Sarah was very homely. In fact, she was the homeliest woman I have ever known. Personally, I mean. I’ve seen a few women who were more unattractive than Sarah, but they were clearly freaks of nature or had been badly injured or had been victimized by some grotesque, disfiguring disease. Sarah, however, was quite normal, and I knew her well, because for three and a half months we were lovers.”

Chores is not the correct word. It doesn’t have the right ring to it. Chores, chores, chores. A bastardization of shorts. But what is the correct word, if not chores?

Pantaloncitos. The diminutive.

Mujercitas.

The rules are as tedious as the experience of reading and memorizing them. Language is all rules with little emphasis on the way the language feels. It needs to feel right. It is such with English, and it is such with Spanish. When they don’t feel right, they cannot be spoken. There’s the awkward pause to ask for assistance.

“Eh, como se dice?”

My grandfather did that often. “Eh? Eh?” His most prominent feature was his eyebrows. Mine grow wilder by the year.

I am becoming scattershot.

You tell me “you’re killing yourself.” I like knowing that I’m the one’s going to do it.

The things I don’t talk—or write—about are my jobs. I’ve had many. Did you know a woman’s shoe size is 2 greater than a man’s? A man’s 6 is a woman’s 8. Take that with you to the Footlocker. Black box testing is testing software in it’s final and packaged form. White box testing is in-depth analysis of the code and data. I don’t care for the latter. It requires deliberate critical thinking; mine is incidental. Pushing a lawn mower allowed time for reflection on bitterness. I started early.

So many young people want to just be taken seriously. Sex, cars, jobs, debt. It’s a generational chant. Take us seriously. The older I get, the less I do, the less I care. I worry about my relational future. Can a man interact on an even keel when everyone is beneath him?

A lesson you learn twice is don’t trust a written voice. You learn this in regards to authors you don’t know. They’re far away and it becomes easy to separate them from their work. The second time you learn it is in regards to human beings who you feel you know, but you don’t. What they write you is not them. They are not the words.

I upload a text file (that’s TXT) every day with the assertions that I found during my playthrough. When I do this I’m tempted to ask, “Who am I?”

Chores is not the correct word. It doesn’t have the right ring to it. Chores, chores, chores. A bastardization of shorts. But what is the correct word, if not chores?

Pantaloncitos. The diminutive.

Mujercitas.

The rules are as tedious as the experience of reading and memorizing them. Language is all rules with little emphasis on the way the language feels. It needs to feel right. It is such with English, and it is such with Spanish. When they don’t feel right, they cannot be spoken. There’s the awkward pause to ask for assistance.

“Eh, como se dice?”

My grandfather did that often. “Eh? Eh?” His most prominent feature was his eyebrows. Mine grow wilder by the year.

I am becoming scattershot.

You tell me “you’re killing yourself.” I like knowing that I’m the one’s going to do it.

The things I don’t talk—or write—about are my jobs. I’ve had many. Did you know a woman’s shoe size is 2 greater than a man’s? A man’s 6 is a woman’s 8. Take that with you to the Footlocker. Black box testing is testing software in it’s final and packaged form. White box testing is in-depth analysis of the code and data. I don’t care for the latter. It requires deliberate critical thinking; mine is incidental. Pushing a lawn mower allowed time for reflection on bitterness. I started early.

So many young people want to just be taken seriously. Sex, cars, jobs, debt. It’s a generational chant. Take us seriously. The older I get, the less I do, the less I care. I worry about my relational future. Can a man interact on an even keel when everyone is beneath him?

A lesson you learn twice is don’t trust a written voice. You learn this in regards to authors you don’t know. They’re far away and it becomes easy to separate them from their work. The second time you learn it is in regards to human beings who you feel you know, but you don’t. What they write you is not them. They are not the words.

I upload a text file (that’s TXT) every day with the assertions that I found during my playthrough. When I do this I’m tempted to ask, “Who am I?”

For later.

  • Sex is a weapon for personal gain to prove superiority via dominance (versus a key aspect of emotional intimacy in a couple relationship).
  • Primary goal is to ‘win’ by overpowering the will of another, to ensure they know ‘their place’ – and sex is a secondary goal.
  • Main pleasure is derived from causing (emotional) pain to the other, i.e., tricking or manipulating them for own gratification.
  • The other is seen as a weak or defective ‘object’ without feelings, thoughts, opinions, etc, of their own.
  • Love is regarded as overall sex-focused, sex is equated with intimacy, and emotional-intimacy is tactically avoided.
  • Women only respect men who dominate them, and respect is associated or equated with obedience.

Creed of the patriarchy, I figure. Lifestyle to some and deviancy to others. It’s something I’m researching.

Read “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Oates.

I’m awful tired. Been working long hours testing one shitty video game and one awesome video game. The awesome one reminds of the reason I’m in this business. Story is it, man. Story, characters, writing. Keeping score bores me. I haven’t done laundry and my jeep’s full of things I need to take to the garage. I want a massage but have zero interest in company that doesn’t just do what I want to do. I’d pay for such company if I wasn’t paying down credit card debt.

We make sacrifices in the name of stability and harmony. Is harmony not just everyone agreeing to do the same thing?

For later.

  • Sex is a weapon for personal gain to prove superiority via dominance (versus a key aspect of emotional intimacy in a couple relationship).
  • Primary goal is to ‘win’ by overpowering the will of another, to ensure they know ‘their place’ – and sex is a secondary goal.
  • Main pleasure is derived from causing (emotional) pain to the other, i.e., tricking or manipulating them for own gratification.
  • The other is seen as a weak or defective ‘object’ without feelings, thoughts, opinions, etc, of their own.
  • Love is regarded as overall sex-focused, sex is equated with intimacy, and emotional-intimacy is tactically avoided.
  • Women only respect men who dominate them, and respect is associated or equated with obedience.

Creed of the patriarchy, I figure. Lifestyle to some and deviancy to others. It’s something I’m researching.

Read “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Oates.

I’m awful tired. Been working long hours testing one shitty video game and one awesome video game. The awesome one reminds of the reason I’m in this business. Story is it, man. Story, characters, writing. Keeping score bores me. I haven’t done laundry and my jeep’s full of things I need to take to the garage. I want a massage but have zero interest in company that doesn’t just do what I want to do. I’d pay for such company if I wasn’t paying down credit card debt.

We make sacrifices in the name of stability and harmony. Is harmony not just everyone agreeing to do the same thing?

A Study of Short Stories

Lying in bed, I began to think about A Study of Short Stories. This was a class I took last Fall, before I knew I was going to move to a different state and thus pause my ever-continuing education. This one was at a college further away than the others I’d been attending. It required driving north on the 280 and exiting onto Skyline just before the arrival in Daly City. I drove this highway every week from August to December. That’s a big change. Warm summer to rainy winter. I was reading for that class, watching films for the film class, and listening to music for the music class. Each one was at a different college. I was going through a series of realizations about denial I’d been in and what I wanted from myself and others, which I had never stopped to consider until then. I had only one person who knew any of this, and she was someone I never met. It was a busy time. I began to think of the drive to that short story class. I thought of the long drive on empty roads at night, free of oncoming headlights and street lamps. I thought of my jeep’s radiator blowing up on the freeway and the cost of towing back to my apartment. I remembered driving by the San Bruno fires and seeing everyone at the college in a panic. I remembered Raymond Carver and Jindabyne. I remembered talking to students, people who were (somewhat) interested in literature and discussion of fictional works. I remembered the Russian gymnast with her aspirations to be a lawyer. During the course of all this thought, which mind you was a mere flash in time, my head started to stir. My chest tightened. I could not move for a minute or two until finally I stood and paced. I have space here—halls to tread, impatient, in the middle of the night. I mention this because before, during that busy time, I barely had room to sleep in. I still could not name the source of this feeling. It was not pain, nor confusion. It was an unfamiliar sensation. It was unease of the most unidentifiable kind, which, for someone like me, is the worst kind. An invisible aggressor, something inherent and profound enough to get me out of bed in the middle of the night. I don’t know what a panic attack is like, so thinking I had one is likely an overreaction. But it sure as hell was something. It might simply be that, finally, I miss the people and place I left behind.